By: Andrew D. Jankowski
What can I say, team. It’s been a devastating week.
Devastating as an American to see the bar of presidential excellence lowered by Donald J. Trump, who holds zero qualifications to hold the office less than a quarter of the nation handed him and whose wife is the embodiment of academic dishonesty and where it gets you in life.
Devastating to know that roughly one in two Americans did not even bother to throw their vote away for professional attention seekers Gary Johnson and Jill Stein.
Devastating as a queer person to have family members and friends disregard your wellbeing under what will likely be the most homophobic American administration of the 21st century.
Devastating to realize straight people still think that marriage equality is the only LGBTQ issue. (It’s not.)
Devastating to know that five-plus years of town halls on bullying and race relations somehow did not stop the election a white nationalist bully to the highest office in the nation.
Devastating to know our president will do more to denounce critical media coverage of him than denounce ideological violence carried out by his disciples.
Devastating to see cable news bungle time and time again when it comes to covering anything more important than a 3 a.m. warehouse fire.
What is not devastating is a week of civil unrest.
PSU’s campus has not returned to peace and complacency following Alyssa Pagan-Pariah’s powerful forum takeover last year, nor should it. Portland State University needs to do more in 2016-2020 and 2020-3020 than offer lip service toward the populations which give the student body the diversity it sorely needs. It starts with we the students, we the faculty, we the employees who blur the line between students and professionals.
Because one rainbow-colored banner hung during the least populated academic quarter-
and-no-further does nothing.